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Duplicate Content - Thinking Inside the 'Big Box' Stores
January 23, 2008
SEOs (myself included) love to preach the Organic Gospel as if knowledge is the barrier, not implementation. "If people only knew this or that," we say, "they'd be saved."
But a lot of times, knowing the right stuff only leads to the next barrier, which is, "How the heck to we DO it?" Various facets of site maintenance -- user experience and tracking, to name only two -- frequently compete with SEO techniques for front-burner attention.
As an example, I want to look at Circuit City's site and show a couple examples of things they're doing that aren't optimal from an organic SEO perspective, but that are probably necessary for other reasons. (I should note that I LOVE the CC site from a user's perspective. They -- and a lot of the Big Box stores, to be fair -- have a great way to narrow and expand the choices to help you find exactly the product(s) you're looking for.)
The first example, however, is one I'm fairly critical of, because I feel like whatever benefit they're gaining probably isn't worth it. The CC home page has two links to the main "TV & Home Entertainment" page -- one in the top nav, and one in the lower set of links. You can see the links in the following screen shot, and I've listed them afterward:
Here are the respective links. I've bolded the points at which the dynamic strings diverge:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/categorySpecial.do?catOid=-12866&N=20012866&c=1
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/categorySpecial.do?catOid=-12866&N=20012866
&SESSIONLINK&cm_re=011308%20HOME%20PAGE%20A-_-navboxes%20
TV-_-TV%20and%20Home%20Entertainment
The content of the pages is identical, so you know where this is going. They're diluting the potential power of each by having a similarly named mirror.
Let's look at a more complicated example. Consider two more URLs on the Circuit City site, and I'll contrast the query strings and the page contents. I've stripped out the "http://www.circuitcity.com" portion of the URL for brevity, but I've linked to them so you can see for yourself if you want. In addition, after each URL, I've shown the breadcrumb navigation from each page so you can see the subtle difference.
Page 1: TVs that cost $500-$999 that are Sony:
URL: /ssm/Televisions/sem/rpsm/c/1/catOid/-12867/Ns/net_price
|0||accm_grs_mgn_dllr|1/link/ref/N/20012866+20012867+312867003+40000229
/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do
Breadcrumb trail:
Page 2: TVs that are Sony that cost $500-$999:
URL: /ssm/Televisions/sem/rpsm/c/1/catOid/-12867/Ns/net_price
|0||accm_grs_mgn_dllr|1/link/ref/N/20012866+20012867+40000229+312867003
/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do
Breadcrumb trail:
The on-page content from these two URLs is identical. After all, no matter in what order you query the database, it should theoretically produce the same products (in this case, three specific TVs). But notice (in bold) how the order of two parameters is swapped in the two URLs, in effect causing a duplication. The content (and breadcrumb navigation) is generated based on the order in which the user selects search criteria. This makes a fantastic user experience -- no doubt about it. But it's hurting them subtly because engines either crawl too many pages and dilute each one's unique potential for ranking well, or, more likely, the bots hit a nav scheme like this, turn a few corners and crawl a handful of pages, then bail because they can recognize what a sinkhole it is.
About a month ago, a WebmasterWorld thread ($upport required) discussed a topic similar to this. Member PageOneResults discussed a client's site, which offers multiple paths and entry points to specific product URLs, with the final product URL varying based on the entry point used and the path taken to that product. Following is a response to his original post, followed by his reaction:
>>If the URL depends on the route taken through the site, then you have a major problem to figure out and fix.Yes, we have a major challenge ahead of us in regards to the one example provided where there were 10 access points for one product. That takes into consideration 5 under www and 5 under non www which is what is happening.
I'm all for as many access points as can be possibly provided as to not hamper the visitor experience. And, as pointed out, as long as that product leads to the same URI from all access points, life is sweet. But, that is not the case...
One important note is that PageOneResults is aka Edward Lewis, who runs SEO Consultants (of which Intrapromote is a proud member). Edward has probably forgotten more about SEO in the last 12 hours than I have ever known, so when he asks for input, it's not due to lack of knowledge. The bottom line is, this stuff can get extremely complicated regardless of your SEO knowledge level.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at January 23, 2008 11:35 AM
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Comments
One way to get around duplicate content at least for promotion by articles is rearranging the content paragraphs. There are a few services out there that will do it including Artemis Pro.
Duplicate content penalty mainly only applies if you have a lower grade website. If the search engines like you, then you're ok.
Posted by: Dan Ider at January 26, 2008 01:52 PM